YouTube at the time was a chaotic kingdom of user generated videos — some raunchy, many using copyrighted content not owned by the people who posted them. Analysts warned that attempts to impose order (and corporate revenue-generating schemes) on the YouTube community would kill the goose. Now, as the WSJ reported, “Morgan Stanley recently estimated that YouTube is on track to generate more than $700 million in operating income on about $4 billion in sales.”

As a senior Google executive, Ms. Mayer had a close-up view of how that was achieved. Today, Ms. Mayer and Yahoo promised not to “screw it up” at Tumblr. If she succeeds, and Tumblr is able to deliver a fresh source of revenue to its stagnant parent, maybe it will be Yahoo shareholders saying “@$%! Yeah!” in the future. Read More »